Identifying Your Information Needs
Your information needs will change as you learn more about your topic and think about your audience. Start by finding general information about your topic, then search for more specific content. Use these questions to guide your research process:
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What background information will my audience need? Depending on your audience analysis, you may need to provide historical background or definitions of key terms in your presentation. If you’re giving an informative speech about the benefits of qigong, for example, you should probably provide some history on this ancient Chinese meditative practice. If you don’t already have such knowledge about your topic, look for trustworthy resources that provide it, such as organizational Web sites and dictionaries.
What specific information is appropriate for my audience? Your audience analysis should determine how much expertise your listeners have with your speech topic. A communication professor presenting her research to professional peers would include more technical details on her methods and findings than she would when presenting the same research to a lay audience.
How current does my information need to be? Some speeches cover topics for which the information is fairly stable, such as a speech on the uses of penicillin. For others, information is changing fast—
such as a speech on the use of DNA evidence in murder investigations. If your speech topic falls into the latter category, use recent online articles, newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and experts for your research. What requirements, if any, does the assignment have about information resources? Your instructor may have defined the number and types of resource materials you can use to develop your speech. For instance, some instructors allow Wikipedia as a speech resource, while others do not. If you are not sure about the requirements, ask your instructor what is acceptable.
